Hence the "my bad" post, for which i didn't bother logging in. People who read the post more carefully than I did modded him up anyway, so it's cool. It's just that my brain recognised the pattern of the text immediately (I've referenced that page a lot;) and so I posted without actually reading it. Sorry.
Erm, as other people have written about in this discussion, it's not just a suggestion. And if I remember correctly, the progress with "modernising" X has been blocked by various things over the last decade. But the future's looking a bit brighter:)
using a GPU's 3D graphics processing power rather than the traditional 2D blitter.
Is this like Keith's Getting X Off The Hardware plans, where he suggests that having your xserver running on top of openGL instead of having to talk to all this messy hardware stuff will make it nicer and faster?
You're completely correct, for certain interpretations of "restrictive". The GPL gives additional rights to non-copyright holders that they otherwise wouldn't have:)
But yes. As you say, calling GPLed software "unrestricted" may cause confusion just as "free" and "open source" do. How do we get around these damn word games, though. Grr.
I hope so. But what I'm worried about is that it seems so literal - "open source" -> "the source is open". Like "free beer" -> "the beer is free". This is what some people in this thread seem to be worried about - the confusion surrounding Microsoft's "open code".
I know it's not perfect, as you've pointed out, but if we called it "unrestricted software" instead, then people would find it a lot harder to muddy the waters, as freeware and shared source are doing with free software and open source.
Fair points. You say "But even open source software (GPL and the like) is restricted", but I think it's impossible in English to come up with one word that completely describes GPL and GPL-like licences, and in my opinion "unrestricted" is the cloest approximation.
Also, you could say the same thing about "free" and the GPL, as BSD people sometimes do, but "free" has the additional problem of having several meanings in English, "free as in freedom" not being one that immediately comes to mind for most people when you say "free $SOMETHING!"
In yesterday's discussion of ESR's criticism of "free software" as a term, I mentioned that I think "unrestricted software" is a better term than either "free software" or "open source". It captures the "libre" idea and spirit of the GPL neatly, imho, and isn't subject to as many word games as "open" and "free" are.
As it seems to capture more of the "libre" than "open" or "free" do, and there's no chance for confusion. Similarly, I wish the "Free Software Foundation" (FSF) would change its name to "the Foundation for Software Freedom" (FSF)...
The trouble with a lot of these fan games is, hopefully through ignornace rather than design, the makers keep the closed source, for whatever reason. This eliminates half the point of doing something like this, because in a few years time fans will face exactly the same problem that caused this generation of fangames to appear - "Noone's making any more Foobar Quest games! I'd better get a team of people together and write one from scratch over several years!".
Actually, one of the recruitment avenues that they took for Bletchley Park was weeding out the nation's best crossword solvers through a competition (http://www.historyarticles.com/bletchley_park.htm ).
I have mod points, but I feel the need to reply here, though it sounds like flamebait.
The 3 other "obvious" emaples you cite are cheating - they circumvent the rules of the guessing competition. Why do you label the actions mentioned in the story as cheating? No rules have been circumvented. All that is being done is making use of the information which is available to everyone in a clever way.
A similar thing happens with card counting in blackjack - all you do is play the game in a smart way instead of blindly guessing. However, the casinos don't want people to do anything other than blindly guess because it means the odds can be tipped in their favour instead of in favour of the house.
Debian's new installer's self rolled, text only, very basic stuff.
The people who have been slaving night and day on an 11+ architecture installer with multiple front ends would probably not appreciate that statement, like Joey Hess and the rest.
I assume you've seen http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid .html
Personally, I find it easiest to call a spade a spade - if you're talking about patents, call them patents, copyrights copyrights etc. The default nature of information and ideas is free - look at the past 4000 years or so of science. The idea of saying "so and so is mine" or "only I'm allowed to do this" with respect to ideas is pretty new, to the best of my knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
Hence the "my bad" post, for which i didn't bother logging in. People who read the post more carefully than I did modded him up anyway, so it's cool. It's just that my brain recognised the pattern of the text immediately (I've referenced that page a lot ;) and so I posted without actually reading it. Sorry.
Here. I totally agree with it, but you really should acknowledge the source.
glitz and Cairo, to name 2 related efforts.
Erm, as other people have written about in this discussion, it's not just a suggestion. And if I remember correctly, the progress with "modernising" X has been blocked by various things over the last decade. But the future's looking a bit brighter :)
Is this like Keith's Getting X Off The Hardware plans, where he suggests that having your xserver running on top of openGL instead of having to talk to all this messy hardware stuff will make it nicer and faster?
2nd most popular machine running the popcon reporting program. But this was due to a cluster being installed.
Here. I haven't tried it personally, but the development effort looks pretty active.
You're completely correct, for certain interpretations of "restrictive". The GPL gives additional rights to non-copyright holders that they otherwise wouldn't have :)
But yes. As you say, calling GPLed software "unrestricted" may cause confusion just as "free" and "open source" do. How do we get around these damn word games, though. Grr.
I hope so. But what I'm worried about is that it seems so literal - "open source" -> "the source is open". Like "free beer" -> "the beer is free". This is what some people in this thread seem to be worried about - the confusion surrounding Microsoft's "open code".
I know it's not perfect, as you've pointed out, but if we called it "unrestricted software" instead, then people would find it a lot harder to muddy the waters, as freeware and shared source are doing with free software and open source.
Fair points. You say "But even open source software (GPL and the like) is restricted", but I think it's impossible in English to come up with one word that completely describes GPL and GPL-like licences, and in my opinion "unrestricted" is the cloest approximation.
Also, you could say the same thing about "free" and the GPL, as BSD people sometimes do, but "free" has the additional problem of having several meanings in English, "free as in freedom" not being one that immediately comes to mind for most people when you say "free $SOMETHING!"
In yesterday's discussion of ESR's criticism of "free software" as a term, I mentioned that I think "unrestricted software" is a better term than either "free software" or "open source". It captures the "libre" idea and spirit of the GPL neatly, imho, and isn't subject to as many word games as "open" and "free" are.
As it seems to capture more of the "libre" than "open" or "free" do, and there's no chance for confusion. Similarly, I wish the "Free Software Foundation" (FSF) would change its name to "the Foundation for Software Freedom" (FSF)...
The trouble with a lot of these fan games is, hopefully through ignornace rather than design, the makers keep the closed source, for whatever reason. This eliminates half the point of doing something like this, because in a few years time fans will face exactly the same problem that caused this generation of fangames to appear - "Noone's making any more Foobar Quest games! I'd better get a team of people together and write one from scratch over several years!".
Carl Sagan: "If you wish to make an apple pie from acratch, you must first invent the universe." (http://www.mediamasters.com/sagan.htm)
Actually, one of the recruitment avenues that they took for Bletchley Park was weeding out the nation's best crossword solvers through a competition (http://www.historyarticles.com/bletchley_park.htm ).
I second the "mod up" recommendation
I have mod points, but I feel the need to reply here, though it sounds like flamebait.
The 3 other "obvious" emaples you cite are cheating - they circumvent the rules of the guessing competition. Why do you label the actions mentioned in the story as cheating? No rules have been circumvented. All that is being done is making use of the information which is available to everyone in a clever way.
A similar thing happens with card counting in blackjack - all you do is play the game in a smart way instead of blindly guessing. However, the casinos don't want people to do anything other than blindly guess because it means the odds can be tipped in their favour instead of in favour of the house.
Debian's new installer's self rolled, text only, very basic stuff.
The people who have been slaving night and day on an 11+ architecture installer with multiple front ends would probably not appreciate that statement, like Joey Hess and the rest.
I suggested this once, since it would require no acronym change and is grammatically correct.
http://www.geocities.com/electricmonk.geo/cthulhu. html
:D
Great old ones for the little young ones
Would these be the unhelpful pages and pages of printouts of the linux kernel that Groklaw mentions?
I assume you've seend .html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoi
Personally, I find it easiest to call a spade a spade - if you're talking about patents, call them patents, copyrights copyrights etc. The default nature of information and ideas is free - look at the past 4000 years or so of science. The idea of saying "so and so is mine" or "only I'm allowed to do this" with respect to ideas is pretty new, to the best of my knowledge.
Coyote Linux Wolverine?
http://www.coyotelinux.com/
So true.
Linus always said he just wanted to code and stay out of all this political stuff, while the RMS camp said that it was all part and parcel of it...
I don't think Linus can sit at OSDL and quietly code his kernel oblivious to this horror going on in the rest of the world much longer...